List of years in literature

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jump to: navigation, search

This page gives a chronological list of years in literature (descending order), with notable publications listed with their respective years and a small selection of notable events. The time covered in individual years covers Renaissance, Baroque and Modern literature, while Medieval literature is resolved by century.

Note: List of years in poetry exists specifically for poetry.

See Table of years in literature for an overview of all "year in literature" pages.

[edit] 21st century

Main article: 21st century in literature

[edit] 2010s

2012 in literature - Death of Wisława Szymborska
2011 in literature - Alexis Jenni's L'Art français de la guerre; Alan Hollinghurst's The Stranger's Child; Téa Obreht's The Tiger's Wife; Death of Josephine Hart, Václav Havel, Christopher Hitchens, Ernesto Sabato, Dick King-Smith, Brian Jacques, Diana Wynne Jones
2010 in literature - Stieg Larsson's The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest; Haruki Murakami's Ichi-kyū-hachi-yon (1Q84 [Book 3]); Edmund de Waal's The Hare with Amber Eyes; Emma Donoghue's Room; 1970 Lost Man Booker Prize awarded; Death of Louis Auchincloss, Beryl Bainbridge, Tony Judt, Harry Mulisch, J. D. Salinger, José Saramago, Erich Segal, Howard Zinn

[edit] 2000s

2009 in literature - Stieg Larsson's The Girl Who Played With Fire; Haruki Murakami's Ichi-kyū-hachi-yon (1Q84 [Books 1 and 2]); Colm Tóibín's Brooklyn; David Baldacci's First Family; Death of J. G. Ballard, Philip José Farmer, Frank McCourt, Budd Schulberg, John Updike
2008 in literature - Stieg Larsson's The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo; Christos Tsiolkas's The Slap; Joseph O'Neill's Netherland; Stephen King's Duma Key; Aravind Adiga's The White Tiger; Death of Michael Crichton, Arthur C. Clarke, David Foster Wallace, Robert Giroux, Harold Pinter, Alain Robbe-Grillet, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Studs Terkel, Margaret Truman
2007 in literature - J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (final book in the Harry Potter series); Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine; Junot Díaz's The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao; Death of Norman Mailer, Kurt Vonnegut
2006 in literature - Richard Dawkins's The God Delusion; Roberto Saviano's Gormorra (Gomorrah); Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o's Wizard of the Crow; Gerbrand Bakker's Boven is het stil (The Twin); Cormac McCarthy's The Road; Rawi Hage's De Niro's Game; Death of Peter Benchley, Betty Friedan, Naguib Mahfouz, John McGahern, Muriel Spark, Mickey Spillane, Wendy Wasserstein
2005 in literature - Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go; John Banville's The Sea; Tony Judt's Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945; Zadie Smith's On Beauty; Chuck Palahniuk's Haunted; Death of John Fowles, Elizabeth Janeway, Arthur Miller, Claude Simon
2004 in literature - Philip Roth's The Plot Against America; José Saramago's Ensaio sobre a Lucidez (Seeing); Colm Tóibín's The Master; Alan Hollinghurst's The Line of Beauty; Lawrence Lessig's Free Culture; Death of Janet Frame, Stieg Larsson, Czesław Miłosz, Françoise Sagan, Hubert Selby, Jr., Susan Sontag
2003 in literature - Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code; Noam Chomsky's Hegemony or Survival; Per Petterson's Ut og stjæle hester (Out Stealing Horses); Death of Edward Said, Howard Fast
2002 in literature - Orhan Pamuk's Kar (Snow); Haruki Murakami's Umibe no Kafuka (Kafka on the Shore); Ian McEwan's Atonement; Margaret MacMillan's Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed the World; Death of Camilo José Cela, John B. Keane, Chaim Potok
2001 in literature - Jamie O'Neill's At Swim, Two Boys; Yann Martel's Life of Pi; Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections; Laura Hillenbrand's Seabiscuit: An American Legend; Death of Douglas Adams, Ken Kesey, Robert Ludlum, Auberon Waugh (son of Evelyn Waugh)
2000 in literature - Zadie Smith's White Teeth; Michael Chabon's The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay; Naomi Klein's No Logo; Death of Sally Amis (daughter of Sir Kingsley and brother of Martin), Charles M. Schulz

[edit] 20th century

Main article: 20th century in literature

1979 in literature - Douglas Adams's The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy; Italo Calvino's Se una notte d'inverno un viaggiatore (If on a winter's night a traveler); V.S. Naipaul's A Bend in the River, Milan Kundera's Kniha smíchu a zapomnění (The Book of Laughter and Forgetting); William Styron's Sophie's Choice; Norman Mailer's The Executioner's Song; Jeffrey Archer's Kane and Abel; Heatherley - Flora Thompson; Death of J. G. Farrell
1978 in literature - John Irving's The World According to Garp; J. G. Farrell's The Singapore Grip; Stephen King's The Stand
1977 in literature - Iris Murdoch's The Sea, the Sea; Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon; Stephen King's The Shining; J. R. R. Tolkien's The Silmarillion; Death of Vladimir Nabokov
1976 in literature - Anne Rice's Interview with the Vampire; Richard Yates's The Easter Parade; Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein's The Final Days; Samuel R. Delany's Triton; Alex Haley's Roots: The Saga of an American Family
1975 in literature - James Clavell's Shōgun; Stephen King's 'Salem's Lot; Jorge Luis Borges's The Book of Sand; Samuel R. Delany's Dhalgren; E. L. Doctorow's Ragtime; Death of P. G. Wodehouse
1974 in literature - Carl Bernstein & Bob Woodward's All the President's Men; Stephen King's Carrie; Peter Benchley's Jaws; Erica Jong's Fear of Flying
1973 in literature - Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow; J. G. Ballard's Crash; J. G. Farrell's The Siege of Krishnapur; Gore Vidal's Burr; Peter Shaffer's play Equus first performed; Death of W. H. Auden, J. R. R. Tolkien
1972 in literature - Richard Bach's Jonathan Livingston Seagull; Hunter S. Thompson's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas; Ira Levin's The Stepford Wives; Death of Ezra Pound, L. P. Hartley
1971 in literature - Frederick Forsyth's The Day of the Jackal; Carlos Castaneda's A Separate Reality: Further Conversations with Don Juan; Xaviera Hollander's The Happy Hooker: My Own Story; Rosamunde Pilcher's The End of Summer
1970 in literature; Muriel Spark's The Driver's Seat; J. G. Farrell's Troubles; Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye; James Dickey's Deliverance; Terry Southern's Blue Movie; Jim Bouton's Ball Four; Death of Máirtín Ó Cadhain;Ted Hughes's Crow

[edit] 1960s

1969 in literature - Inaugural Booker Prize awarded to P. H. Newby's Something to Answer For; Mario Puzo's The Godfather; Philip Roth's Portnoy's Complaint; Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five; Vladimir Nabokov's Ada or Ardor: A Family Chronicle; Maya Angelou's I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings; Death of Jack Kerouac
1968 in literature - Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?; Tom Wolfe's The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test; Arthur Hailey's Airport; Albert Cohen's Belle du Seigneur; Carlos Castaneda's The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge; Death of John Steinbeck, Edna Ferber, Upton Sinclair, Enid Blyton
1967 in literature - Gabriel García Márquez's Cien años de soledad (One Hundred Years of Solitude); Vladimir Nabokov's Speak, Memory: An Autobiography Revisited; Flann O'Brien's The Third Policeman; Milan Kundera's Žert (The Joke); Marshall McLuhan and Quentin Fiore's The Medium is the Massage: An Inventory of Effects; William Manchester's The Death of a President; Robert K. Massie's Nicholas and Alexandra; Allan W. Eckert's Wild Season; Death of Siegfried Sassoon
1966 in literature - Mikhail Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita; Thomas Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49; Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea; Truman Capote's In Cold Blood; Leonard Cohen's Beautiful Losers; Larry McMurtry's The Last Picture Show; Tom Stoppard's play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead first performed; Death of Frank O'Connor, Brian O'Nolan, Evelyn Waugh; Basil Buntings' Briggflatts
1965 in literature - Alex Haley's The Autobiography of Malcolm X, Saul Bellow's Herzog; Norman Mailer's An American Dream; John Fowles's The Magus; John McGahern's The Dark; Ester Ringnér-Lundgren's Little Trulsa; Death of T. S. Eliot, W. Somerset Maugham
1964 in literature - Marshall McLuhan's Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, Thomas Berger's Little Big Man; Leonard Cohen's Flowers for Hitler; Roald Dahl's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory; Hubert Selby, Jr.'s Last Exit to Brooklyn; Brian Friel's play Philadelphia, Here I Come! first performed; Death of Brendan Behan, Ian Fleming, Seán O'Casey; Refusal of Nobel Prize by Jean-Paul Sartre; Philip Larkin's The Whitsun Weddings
1963 in literature - Thomas Pynchon's V.; Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar; Kurt Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle; Pierre Boulle's La Planete des Singes (Planet of the Apes); Death of Aldous Huxley, Robert Frost, Clifford Odets, Sylvia Plath, William Carlos Williams, C. S. Lewis; John Cowper Powys
1962 in literature - Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest; Vladimir Nabokov's Pale Fire; Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich; Doris Lessing's The Golden Notebook; Jorge Luis Borges's Labyrinths; Philip K. Dick's The Man in the High Castle; Carlos Fuentes's The Death of Artemio Cruz; Death of Hermann Hesse, William Faulkner, E. E. Cummings
1961 in literature - Joseph Heller's Catch-22; V. S. Naipaul's A House for Mr. Biswas; Richard Yates's Revolutionary Road; Muriel Spark's The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie; Robert A. Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land; Death of Ernest Hemingway, Frantz Fanon
1960 in literature - William L. Shirer's The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich; Harper Lee'sTo Kill a Mockingbird; Edna O'Brien's The Country Girls; Death of Albert Camus, Boris Pasternak, Nevil Shute, Richard Wright; Lady Chatterley trial

[edit] 1950s

1959 in literature - William S. Burroughs's Naked Lunch; Günter Grass's The Tin Drum; Heinrich Böll's Billiards at Half-past Nine; Eugène Ionesco's Rhinocéros (Rhinoceros); André Schwarz-Bart's The Last of the Just; Terry Southern's The Magic Christian; Alain Robbe-Grillet's In the Labyrinth; Death of Raymond Chandler
1958 in literature - Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart; Brendan Behan's Borstal Boy; Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa's Il Gattopardo (The Leopard); Leon Uris's Exodus; Terry Southern's Candy; Jack Kerouac's The Dharma Bums; Claude Simon's The Grass; R. K. Narayan's The Guide; Harold Pinter's play The Birthday Party first performed
1957 in literature - Jack Kerouac's On the Road; Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged; Vladimir Nabokov's Pnin; Patrick White's Voss; Death of Oliver St. John Gogarty, Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa; Birth of Sir Stephen Fry; Ted Hughes's The Hawk in the Rain
1956 in literature - Grace Metalious's Peyton Place; Friedrich Dürrenmatt's The Visit; Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey into Night
1955 in literature - Robert A. Heinlein's Tunnel in the Sky; Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita; J. R. R. Tolkien's The Return of the King; Death of Thomas Mann
1954 in literature - William Golding's Lord of the Flies; J. R. R. Tolkien's The Fellowship of the Ring; J. R. R. Tolkien's The Two Towers; Aldous Huxley's The Doors of Perception; Kingsley Amis's Lucky Jim; Christy Brown's My Left Foot; William Soutar's Diaries of a Dying Man
1953 in literature - Ian Fleming's Casino Royale (First James Bond novel); Saul Bellow's The Adventures of Augie March; Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451; L. P. Hartley's The Go-Between; Leon Uris's Battle Cry; Arthur Miller's play The Crucible first performed
1952 in literature - Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot; Ernest Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea; E. B. White's Charlotte's Web; Flannery O'Connor's Wise Blood; Death of Knut Hamsun
1951 in literature - J. D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye; Graham Greene's The End of the Affair; Marguerite Yourcenar's Memoirs of Hadrian; John Cowper Powys's Porius
1950 in literature - Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles; Eugène Ionesco's The Bald Soprano; C. S. Lewis's The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe; Death of George Orwell, George Bernard Shaw

[edit] 1940s

1949 in literature - George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four and Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman
1948 in literature - Graham Greene's The Heart of the Matter and Norman Mailer's The Naked and the Dead, Still Glides the Stream by Flora Thompson
1947 in literature - Anne Frank's The Diary of a Young Girl; Thomas Mann's Doctor Faustus
1946 in literature - Eugene O'Neill's The Iceman Cometh; Nikos Kazantzakis's Zorba the Greek; Death of H. G. Wells
1945 in literature - George Orwell's Animal Farm; Bertrand Russell's A History of Western Philosophy And Its Connection with Political and Social Circumstances from the Earliest Times to the Present Day; Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited; Flora Thompson's Lark Rise to Candleford; John Steinbeck's Cannery Row; Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn sentenced to eight years in a labour camp for criticism of Stalin
1944 in literature - Jean-Paul Sartre's No Exit; Jean Genet's Our Lady of the Flowers; John Hersey's A Bell for Adano
1943 in literature - Jean-Paul Sartre's Anti-Semite and Jew and Being and Nothingness; Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead; T. S. Eliot's Four Quartets published together for the first time; Hermann Hesse's Das Glasperlenspiel (The Glass Bead Game)
1942 in literature - Albert Camus's Le Mythe de Sisyphe (The Myth of Sisyphus) and L'Étranger (The Stranger); Edith Hamilton's Mythology; Enid Blyton's Five on a Treasure Island (first in The Famous Five series); Death of Stefan Zweig
1941 in literature - Virginia Woolf's Between the Acts; Death of James Joyce, Virginia Woolf
1940 in literature - Arthur Koestler's Darkness at Noon; Graham Greene's The Power and the Glory; Ernest Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls; Carson McCullers's The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter; Richard Wright's Native Son; Death of F. Scott Fitzgerald; John Cowper Powys's Owen Glendower (novel).

[edit] 1930s

1939 in literature - James Joyce's Finnegans Wake; Flann O'Brien's At Swim-Two-Birds; John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath; Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep; Flora Thompson's Lark Rise; Nathanael West's The Day of the Locust; Richard Llewellyn's How Green Was My Valley; Death of Sigmund Freud, W. B. Yeats
1938 in literature - Jean-Paul Sartre's La Nausée; Graham Greene's Brighton Rock; Evelyn Waugh's Scoop; Henry Miller's Tropic of Capricorn; T. H. White's The Sword in the Stone; Vladimir Bartol's Alamut
1937 in literature - John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men; J. R. R. Tolkien's The Hobbit, or There and Back Again; Georges Bernanos's Journal d'un Curé de Campagne (Diary of a Country Priest)
1936 in literature - William Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom!; Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind; Daphne du Maurier's Jamaica Inn; First issue of Life magazine; Killing of Federico García Lorca
1935 in literature - Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House on the Prairie; First paperback published by Penguin Books; Death of Fernando Pessoa
1934 in literature - F. Scott Fitzgerald's Tender Is the Night; Robert Graves's I, Claudius; Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer; Irving Stone's Lust for Life; Dashiell Hammett's The Thin Man; James Hilton's Goodbye, Mr. Chips; James M. Cain's The Postman Always Rings Twice; H. P. Lovecraft completes Supernatural Horror in Literature (1925–34); Death of Andrei Bely
1933 in literature - André Malraux's La Condition Humaine (Man's Fate); Gertrude Stein's The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas; James Hilton's Lost Horizon; Vera Brittain's Testament of Youth; Death of George Moore; John Cowper Powys A Glastonbury Romance.
1932 in literature - Aldous Huxley's Brave New World; Louis-Ferdinand Céline's Voyage au Bout de la Nuit (Journey to the End of the Night); Hermann Hesse's Journey to the East
1931 in literature - Pearl S. Buck's The Good Earth; Georges Simenon's first Maigret novel; James Hanley's Boy
1930 in literature - William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying; Dashiell Hammett's The Maltese Falcon; Luigi Pirandello's The Man With the Flower in His Mouth becomes the first broadcast television drama; Death of D. H. Lawrence

[edit] 1920s

1929 in literature - William Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury; Ernest Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms; Alfred Döblin's Berlin Alexanderplatz; Erich Maria Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front; Robert Graves's Goodbye to All That; Establishment of Faber and Faber; John Cowper Powys's Wolf Solent.
1928 in literature - D. H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover; Siegfried Sassoon's Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man; Bertholt Brecht's The Threepenny Opera; Death of Thomas Hardy
1927 in literature - Final instalment of Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time; Hermann Hesse's Steppenwolf; Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse; Arthur Conan Doyle's The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes; Sinclair Lewis's Elmer Gantry; Yuri Olesha's Envy; Sigrid Undset's The Snake Pit
1926 in literature - A. A. Milne's Winnie-the-Pooh; Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises; Sean O'Casey's play The Plough and the Stars
1925 in literature - F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby; W. Somerset Maugham's The Painted Veil; Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway; Franz Kafka's Der Prozeß (The Trial); Death of Sergey Esenin;
1924 in literature - Thomas Mann's Der Zauberberg (The Magic Mountain); E. M. Forster's A Passage to India; Herman Melville's Billy Budd, Foretopman; Death of Franz Kafka, Joseph Conrad
1923 in literature - Kahlil Gibran's The Prophet; Lord Peter Wimsey makes his first appearance in print
1922 in literature - James Joyce's Ulysses; T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land; Hermann Hesse's Siddhartha; E. R. Eddison's The Worm Ouroboros Death of Marcel Proust (In Search of Lost Time completed)
1921 in literature - Karel Čapek's play, R.U.R.
1920 in literature - F. Scott Fitzgerald's This Side of Paradise; D. H. Lawrence's Women in Love; Sinclair Lewis's Main Street; Edith Wharton's The Age of Innocence

[edit] 1910s

1919 in literature - W. Somerset Maugham's The Moon and Sixpence
1918 in literature - Booth Tarkington's The Magnificent Ambersons; Lytton Strachey's Eminent Victorians; Death of Wilfred Owen
1917 in literature - T. S. Eliot's The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock; Aleister Crowley's Moonchild
1916 in literature - Albert Einstein's Relativity; James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man; Death of Henry James
1915 in literature - Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis; Death of Rupert Brooke
1914 in literature - Stephen Leacock's Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich; Disappearance of Ambrose Bierce in Mexico
1913 in literature - Andrei Bely's Petersburg; D. H. Lawrence's Sons and Lovers; George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion; Edgar Rice Burroughs's The Return of Tarzan; Guillaume Apollinaire's Alcools
1912 in literature - Thomas Mann's Death in Venice; Edgar Rice Burroughs's Tarzan of the Apes; Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World
1911 in literature - Joseph Conrad's Under Western Eyes; Gaston Leroux's The Phantom of the Opera; Ambrose Bierce's The Devil's Dictionary; Edith Wharton's Ethan Frome; 11th edition of Encyclopædia Britannica published
1910 in literature - E. M. Forster's Howards End; Hanns Heinz Ewers's The Sorcerer's Apprentice; Death of Leo Tolstoy

[edit] 1900s

1909 in literature - L. Frank Baum's The Road to Oz; Hermann Sudermann's The Song of Songs
1908 in literature - E. M. Forster's A Room with a View; Lucy Maud Montgomery's Anne of Green Gables; Anatole France's L'île des Pingouins (Penguin Island); Kenneth Grahame's The Wind in the Willows
1907 in literature - Arnold Bennett's The City of Pleasure; Algernon Blackwood's The Listener and Other Stories
1906 in literature - Upton Sinclair's The Jungle; Arthur Machen's The House of Souls; Lord Dunsany's Time and the Gods; Death of Henrik Ibsen
1905 in literature - Jack London's White Fang; Arthur Conan Doyle's The Return of Sherlock Holmes
1904 in literature - Joseph Conrad's Nostromo; E. M. Forster's Where Angels Fear to Tread; Henry James's The Golden Bowl; M. R. James's Ghost Stories of an Antiquary; Jack London's The Sea-Wolf; William Henry Hudson's Green Mansions; Anton Chekhov's play The Cherry Orchard first performed; Death of Anton Chekhov
1903 in literature - Henry James's The Ambassadors; Jack London's The Call of the Wild; W. E. B. Du Bois's The Souls of Black Folk; Bram Stoker's The Jewel of Seven Stars
1902 in literature - André Gide's The Immoralist; Henry James's The Wings of the Dove; Arthur Conan Doyle's The Hound of the Baskervilles; Beatrix Potter's The Tale of Peter Rabbit; Death of Émile Zola
1901 in literature - Thomas Mann's Buddenbrooks; M. P. Shiel's The Purple Cloud; Death of Queen Victoria
1900 in literature - L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz; Joseph Conrad's Lord Jim; Theodore Dreiser's Sister Carrie; Gabriele d'Annunzio's The Flame of Life; Death of Oscar Wilde

[edit] 19th century

Main article: 19th century in literature

[edit] 1890s

1899 in literature - The School and Society - John Dewey; The Awakening - Kate Chopin; Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad; The Yellow Wallpaper - Charlotte Perkins Gilman
1898 in literature - Paris - Emile Zola; The War of the Worlds - H. G. Wells; The Turn of the Screw - Henry James
1897 in literature - Captains Courageous - Rudyard Kipling; Dracula - Bram Stoker; Divagations - Stéphane Mallarmé; The Beetle - Richard Marsh; The Invisible Man - H. G. Wells
1896 in literature - The Island of Doctor Moreau - H. G. Wells; The Well at the World's End - William Morris; Shapes in the Fire - M.P. Shiel
1895 in literature - The Time Machine - H. G. Wells; Almayer's Folly - Joseph Conrad; Pharaoh - Bolesław Prus; Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy; The Three Impostors - Arthur Machen
1894 in literature - The Jungle Books - Rudyard Kipling; The Prisoner of Zenda - Anthony Hope; Pan - Knut Hamsun; The Great God Pan - Arthur Machen; Studies of Death: Romantic Tales - Stanislaus Eric Stenbock
1893 in literature - The New Woman - Bolesław Prus
1892 in literature - The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle; Children of the Ghetto - Israel Zangwill; Gunga Din - Rudyard Kipling

1891 in literature - Tales of Soldiers and Civilians - Ambrose Bierce; Diary of a Pilgrimage - Jerome K. Jerome; Tess of the d'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy; "The Picture of Dorian Gray"- Oscar Wilde
1890 in literature - Hedda Gabler - Henrik Ibsen; Hunger - Knut Hamsun; An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge - Ambrose Bierce;

[edit] 1880s

1889 in literature - Thus Spoke Zarathustra - Friedrich Nietzsche; The Doll - Bolesław Prus; The Child of Pleasure - Gabriele d'Annunzio
1888 in literature - The Man Who Would Be King - Rudyard Kipling
1887 in literature - She - Henry Rider Haggard; Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle; Thelma - Marie Corelli
1886 in literature - L'Œuvre (The Masterpiece) - Emile Zola; Little Lord Fauntleroy - Frances Hodgson Burnett; Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde - Robert Louis Stevenson; The Outpost - Bolesław Prus; The Bostonians - Henry James
1885 in literature - King Solomon's Mines - Henry Rider Haggard; Marius the Epicurean - Walter Pater; Alfred, Lord Tennyson completes Idylls of the King; Germinal - Émile Zola; George A. Moore - The Mummer's Wife; The Mikado - Gilbert and Sullivan
1884 in literature - Miss Bretherton - Mary Augusta Ward; The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain
1883 in literature - Une Vie - Guy de Maupassant; Treasure Island - Robert Louis Stevenson; The Adventures of Pinocchio - Carlo Collodi
1882 in literature - The Prince and the Pauper - Mark Twain; The Naval War of 1812 - Theodore Roosevelt
1881 in literature - The Portrait of a Lady - Henry James; The Black Robe - Wilkie Collins
1880 in literature - Ben-Hur - Lew Wallace; Workers in the Dawn - George Gissing; Nana - Émile Zola; The Brothers Karamazov - Fyodor Dostoevsky; Birth of Andrei Bely

[edit] 1870s

1879 in literature - The Red Room - August Strindberg; A Doll's House - Henrik Ibsen
1878 in literature - H.M.S. Pinafore - Gilbert and Sullivan
1877 in literature - Under the Lilacs - Louisa May Alcott; Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy; L'Assommoir - Emile Zola; Black Beauty - Anna Sewell; Povídky malostranské ("Tales of the Little Quarter") - Jan Neruda;

1876 in literature - The Adventures of Tom Sawyer - Mark Twain; The Shadow of the Sword - Robert Buchanan; The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs - William Morris
1875 in literature - The Way We Live Now - Anthony Trollope; Beauchamp's Career - George Meredith
1874 in literature - Les Diaboliques - Jules Amédée Barbey d'Aurevilly; Far from the Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
1873 in literature - Around the World in 80 Days - Jules Verne; The Poison Tree - Bankim Chatterjee; Red Cotton Night-Cap Country - Robert Browning
1872 in literature - The Birth of Tragedy - Friedrich Nietzsche
1871 in literature - Middlemarch - George Eliot; Through the Looking-Glass - Lewis Carroll
1870 in literature - Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea - Jules Verne; Venus in Furs - Leopold von Sacher-Masoch; Lothair - Benjamin Disraeli

[edit] 1860s

1869 in literature - War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy; L'Education Sentimentale - Gustave Flaubert; Les Chants de Maldoror - Comte de Lautréamont; Lorna Doone - R. D. Blackmore; The Idiot - Fyodor Dostoevsky
1868 in literature - Little Women - Louisa May Alcott; The Luck of Roaring Camp - Bret Harte; The Moonstone - Wilkie Collins
1867 in literature - The Gambler - Fyodor Dostoevsky
1866 in literature - Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoevsky; Poems and Ballads - Algernon Charles Swinburne
1865 in literature - Alice's Adventures in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll; Our Mutual Friend - Charles Dickens; From the Earth to the Moon - Jules Verne
1864 in literature - Journey to the Center of the Earth - Jules Verne; Notes from Underground - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
1863 in literature - Capitan Fracassa - Théophile Gautier
1862 in literature - Les Misérables - Victor Hugo; Fathers and Sons - Ivan Turgenev
1861 in literature - Silas Marner - George Eliot; Framley Parsonage - Anthony Trollope; Great Expectations - Charles Dickens; East Lynne - Mrs Henry Wood
1860 in literature - Max Havelaar - Multatuli; The Mill on the Floss - George Eliot

[edit] 1850s

1859 in literature - A Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens; The Ordeal of Richard Feverel - George Meredith; Oblomov - Ivan Goncharov; On the Origin of Species - Charles Darwin
1858 in literature - A House of Gentlefolk - Ivan Turgenev
1857 in literature - Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert; Little Dorritt - Charles Dickens; Les Fleurs du mal - Charles Baudelaire; The Virginians - William Makepeace Thackeray; Tom Brown's Schooldays - Thomas Hughes; The Hasheesh Eater - Fitz Hugh Ludlow
1856 in literature - The Daisy Chain - Charlotte Mary Yonge; Aurora Leigh - Elizabeth Barrett Browning; Lilies In December - Agustus Montrose
1855 in literature - The Grandmother - Božena Němcová; Westward Ho! - Charles Kingsley
1854 in literature - Walden - Henry David Thoreau; The Newcomes - William Makepeace Thackeray
1853 in literature - Bleak House by Charles Dickens is the first English novel to feature a detective; The Heir of Redclyffe - Charlotte Mary Yonge; The Scholar Gipsy - Matthew Arnold; Bartleby, the Scrivener - Herman Melville
1852 in literature - Uncle Tom's Cabin - Harriet Beecher Stowe
1851 in literature - Moby-Dick - Herman Melville; Lavengro - George Borrow; The House of the Seven Gables - Nathaniel Hawthorne
1850 in literature - The Scarlet Letter - Nathaniel Hawthorne; David Copperfield - Charles Dickens, Household Words edited by Charles Dickens begins publication; Christmas-Eve and Easter-Day - Robert Browning

[edit] 1840s

1849 in literature - David Copperfield - Charles Dickens, published as a serial in installments; The Oregon Trail - Francis Parkman
1848 in literature - The Tenant of Wildfell Hall - Anne Brontë; Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackery; Eureka - Edgar Allan Poe -Completed
1847 in literature - The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Alexandre Dumas, père; Wuthering Heights - Emily Brontë; Jane Eyre - Charlotte Brontë; Evangeline - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow; Tancred - Benjamin Disraeli
1846 in literature - Cousin Bette - Honoré de Balzac
1845 in literature - The Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas, père; Twenty Years After - Alexandre Dumas, père; La Reine Margot - Alexandre Dumas, père; Stages on Life's Way - Søren Kierkegaard
1844 in literature - The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas, père
1843 in literature - A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens; Windsor Castle - William Harrison Ainsworth; Either/Or - Søren Kierkegaard; Repetition (Kierkegaard) - Søren Kierkegaard; The Ugly Duckling - Hans Christian Andersen
1842 in literature - Dead Souls - Nikolai Gogol
1841 in literature - The Deerslayer - James Fenimore Cooper; Demon - Mikhail Lermontov
1840 in literature - A Hero of Our Time - Mikhail Lermontov; Two Years Before the Mast - Richard Henry Dana, Jr.; Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque - Edgar Allan Poe; Kobzar - Taras Hryhorovych Shevchenko; The Arabian Nights - Edward William Lane publishes an English version

[edit] 1830s

1839 in literature - The Voyage of the Beagle - Charles Darwin; Nicholas Nickleby - Charles Dickens; The Charterhouse of Parma - Stendhal
1838 in literature - Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens; The Birds of America - John James Audubon
1837 in literature - The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club - Charles Dickens; Death of the Poet - Mikhail Lermontov
1836 in literature - Máj - Karel Hynek Mácha; The Captain's Daughter - Alexander Pushkin; The Government Inspector and The Nose - Nikolai Gogol
1835 in literature - Le Père Goriot - Honoré de Balzac; Taras Bulba - Nikolai Gogol
1834 in literature - Sartor Resartus - Thomas Carlyle; The Queen of Spades - Alexander Pushkin
1833 in literature - Gamiani - Alfred de Musset; Eugene Onegin - Aleksandr Pushkin; Eugénie Grandet - Honoré de Balzac
1832 in literature - Eugene Onegin - Alexander Pushkin; Faust Part Two - Goethe; Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka - Nikolai Gogol
1831 in literature - Notre-Dame de Paris - Victor Hugo
1830 in literature - The Red and the Black - Stendhal

[edit] 1820s

1829 in literature - The Misfortunes of Elphin - Thomas Love Peacock
1828 in literature - The Birds of America - John James Audubon
1827 in literature - Book of Songs (poetry) - Heinrich Heine
1826 in literature - The Last of the Mohicans - James Fenimore Cooper; Cinq-Mars - Alfred de Vigny
1825 in literature - Boris Godunov - Alexander Pushkin; The Betrothed - Alessandro Manzoni
1824 in literature - Our Village - Mary Russell Mitford
1823 in literature - The Pioneers - James Fenimore Cooper; Woe from Wit - Alexander Griboyedov; The Fountain of Bakhchisaray - Alexander Pushkin
1822 in literature - The Vision of Judgment - Lord Byron
1821 in literature - Confessions of an English Opium Eater - Thomas De Quincey
1820 in literature - Ruslan and Ludmila - Alexander Pushkin

[edit] 1810s

1819 in literature - Ivanhoe - Sir Walter Scott; The Sketch Book - Washington Irving; Ode to a Nightingale - John Keats
1818 in literature - Frankenstein - Mary Shelley; Julian and Maddalo - Percy Bysshe Shelley
1817 in literature - Rob Roy - Sir Walter Scott; Ormond and Harrington - Maria Edgeworth
1816 in literature - Adolphe - Benjamin Constant; Emma - Jane Austen; The Sandman - E.T.A. Hoffman
1815 in literature - The Pastor's Fireside - Jane Porter
1814 in literature - The Wanderer - Fanny Burney; Mansfield Park - Jane Austen
1813 in literature - The Swiss Family Robinson - Johann David Wyss; Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
1812 in literature - The Milesian Chief - Charles Robert Maturin; Children's and Household Tales - The Brothers Grimm
1811 in literature - Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
1810 in literature - The Houses of Osma and Almeria - Regina Maria Roche

[edit] 1800s

1809 in literature - The Martyrs - François-René de Chateaubriand; Death of Thomas Paine
1808 in literature - Faust (Part One) - Goethe
1807 in literature - Tales from Shakespeare - Charles Lamb & Mary Lamb
1806 in literature - The Earthquake in Chile - Heinrich von Kleist
1805 in literature - The Wonder of the Village - Mary Meeke; Manuscript Found in Saragossa - Count Jan Nepomucen Potocki
1804 in literature - Jerusalem (poetry) - William Blake
1803 in literature - St. Clair of the Isles - Elisabeth Helme
1802 in literature - Delphine - Anne Louise Germaine de Stael
1801 in literature - The Wizard and the Sword - Henry Summersett
1800 in literature - Hymns to the Night - Novalis

[edit] 18th century

Main article: 18th century in literature

[edit] 1790s

1799 in literature - Arthur Mervyn - Charles Brockden Brown
1798 in literature - Lyrical Ballads - Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth; The Rime of the Ancient Mariner - Samuel Taylor Coleridge
1797 in literature - l'Histoire de Juliette - Marquis de Sade; Kubla Khan - Samuel Taylor Coleridge
1796 in literature - Camilla - Fanny Burney
1795 in literature - Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship (to 1796) - Goethe; The Mysteries of Udolpho - Ann Radcliffe
1794 in literature - The Age of Reason - Thomas Paine
1793 in literature - Songs of Experience - William Blake
1792 in literature - A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Mary Wollstonecraft
1791 in literature - Justine - Marquis de Sade; The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. - James Boswell; Dream of the Red Chamber - Cao Xueqin
1790 in literature - Reflections on the Revolution in France - Edmund Burke; Tam O'Shanter - Robert Burns

[edit] 1780s

1789 in literature - Songs of Innocence - William Blake
1788 in literature - Memoirs - Saint-Simon
1787 in literature - Don Carlos - Friedrich Schiller
1786 in literature - Poems Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect - Robert Burns
1785 in literature - 120 Days of Sodom - Marquis de Sade; Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals - Immanuel Kant, Anton Reiser (to 1790) - Karl Philipp Moritz; The Task - William Cowper
1784 in literature - Barham Downs - Robert Bage; Death of - Samuel Johnson and Denis Diderot
1783 in literature - Prolegomena to any Future Metaphysics - Immanuel Kant
1782 in literature - The Robbers - Friedrich Schiller Les Liaisons Dangereuses - Pierre Choderlos de Laclos
1781 in literature - A Critique of Pure Reason - Immanuel Kant
1780 in literature - Letters to a Philosophical Unbeliever - Joseph Priestley

[edit] 1770s

1779 in literature - Nathan the Wise - Gotthold Lessing; Fables and Parables - Ignacy Krasicki
1778 in literature - Evelina - Fanny Burney; death of Voltaire (b. 1694)
1777 in literature - The School for Scandal - Richard Brinsley Sheridan
1776 in literature - Common Sense - Thomas Paine
1775 in literature - The Rivals - Richard Sheridan
1774 in literature - The Sorrows of Young Werther - Goethe
1773 in literature - Der Messias (from 1749) - Klopstock; Jaques le fataliste - Denis Diderot
1772 in literature - the Marquis de Sade embarks on an orgy, as a result of which he is convicted in absentia of sodomy and poisoning and receives a death sentence; he escapes.
1771 in literature - Jacques the Fatalist (to 1773) - Diderot
1770 in literature - Épître à l'Auteur du Livre des Trois Imposteurs - Voltaire

[edit] 1760s

1769 in literature - The History of Emily Montague - Frances Brooke
1768 in literature - Poems - Thomas Gray
1767 in literature - Minna von Barnhelm - Gotthold Lessing
1766 in literature - The Vicar of Wakefield - Oliver Goldsmith
1765 in literature - Beginning of the Sturm und Drang movement
1764 in literature - The Castle of Otranto - Horace Walpole
1763 in literature - James Boswell is introduced to Samuel Johnson
1762 in literature - Emile: or, On Education - Jean-Jacques Rousseau
1761 in literature - Julie, ou la nouvelle Héloïse - Jean-Jacques Rousseau
1760 in literature - Tristram Shandy (to 1770) - Laurence Sterne

[edit] 1750s

1759 in literature - Candide - Voltaire
1758 in literature - Voltaire buys his estate at Ferney
1757 in literature - Pierre-Augustin Caron changes his surname to Beaumarchais
1756 in literature - Gilbert White becomes curate of Selborne, Hampshire
1755 in literature - Letter to Lord Chesterfield - Samuel Johnson
1754 in literature - The History of Great Britain (to 1762) - David Hume
1753 in literature - The History of Sir Charles Grandison - Samuel Richardson
1752 in literature - Birth of Fanny Burney
1751 in literature - Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard - Thomas Gray
1750 in literature - Rambler essays (to 1752) - Samuel Johnson

[edit] 1740s

1749 in literature - The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling - Henry Fielding
1748 in literature - Fanny Hill - John Cleland; An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding - David Hume
1747 in literature - Clarissa (to 1748) - Samuel Richardson
1746 in literature - Voltaire is elected to the French Academy
1745 in literature - Death of Jonathan Swift
1744 in literature - The Female Spectator is launched by Eliza Haywood
1743 in literature - The Life of Jonathan Wild the Great - Henry Fielding
1742 in literature - Joseph Andrews - Henry Fielding
1741 in literature - Shamela - Henry Fielding
1740 in literature - Institutions de physique – Émilie du Châtelet

[edit] 1730s

1739 in literature - A Treatise of Human Nature (to 1740) - David Hume
1738 in literature - Leonidas - Richard Glover
1737 in literature - Birth of Thomas Paine, free thinker and revolutionary (died 1809)
1736 in literature -
1735 in literature - At the end of the trial of John Peter Zenger for seditious libel in the New York Weekly Journal, he is found not guilty by the jury determining that truth was a defense against charges of libel..

1734 in literature - Copies of Voltaire's Lettres philosophiques sur les Anglais are burned, and a warrant is issued for the author's arrest.
1733 in literature - Letters Concerning the English Nation - Voltaire
1732 in literature - Essay on Man (to 1744) - Alexander Pope
1731 in literature - Insel Felsenburg (to 1743) - Johann Gottfried Schnabel
1730 in literature - Le Jeu de l'Amour et du Hasard - Pierre de Marivaux

[edit] 1720s

1729 in literature - Death of William Congreve
1728 in literature - Alexander Pope, The Dunciad
1727 in literature - Eliza Haywood, Philidore and Placentia
1726 in literature - Jonathan Swift, Gulliver's Travels
1725 in literature - Birth of Giacomo Casanova
1724 in literature - Voltaire, La Henriade
1723 in literature - Births of Richard Price and Adam Smith; deaths of Susannah Centlivre and Marianna Alcoforado
1722 in literature - Daniel Defoe, Moll Flanders
1721 in literature - Montesquieu, Persian Letters
1720 in literature - Daniel Defoe, Memoirs of a Cavalier

[edit] 1710s

1719 in literature - Robinson Crusoe - Daniel Defoe
1718 in literature - Oedipe - Voltaire's first play
1717 in literature
1716 in literature
1715 in literature - Nicholas Rowe becomes Poet Laureate of Great Britain
1714 in literature - Bernard de Mandeville, The Fable of the Bees
1713 in literature - Birth of Laurence Sterne
1712 in literature - Alexander Pope, The Rape of the Lock
1711 in literature - The Spectator is founded by Addison and Steele
1710 in literature - Colley Cibber becomes manager of Drury Lane

[edit] 1700s

1709 in literature - Ode à Sainte-Geneviève - Voltaire's first published work
1708 in literature
1707 in literature
1706 in literature
1705 in literature - Nouveaux essais sur l'entendement humain ("New Essays on Human Understanding") - Gottfried Leibniz
1704 in literature - A Tale of a Tub - Jonathan Swift
1703 in literature - The Storm - Daniel Defoe (released 1704)
1702 in literature
1701 in literature
1700 in literature

[edit] 17th century literature

Main article: 17th century in literature

[edit] 1690s

1699 in literature -Death of Jean Racine
1698 in literature
1697 in literature
1696 in literature
1695 in literature
1694 in literature - Feb 20th, birth of Voltaire
1693 in literature
1692 in literature
1691 in literature - Athalie - Jean Racine
1690 in literature

[edit] 1680s

1689 in literature
1688 in literature - Aphra Behn, Oroonoko
1687 in literature - Isaac Newton, Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica; John Dryden The Hind and the Panther
1686 in literature
1685 in literature
1684 in literature
1683 in literature
1682 in literature
1681 in literature
1680 in literature

[edit] 1670s

1679 in literature
1678 in literature - The Pilgrim's Progress - John Bunyan
1677 in literature - Phèdre - Jean Racine
1676 in literature
1675 in literature
1674 in literature Nouveaux contes - Jean de la Fontaine
1673 in literature - Death of Molière (b. 1622), D'Artagnan, soldier, inspiration for Dumas' character
1672 in literature - Les Femmes Savantes - Molière
1671 in literature - Samson Agonistes - John Milton

1670 in literature - Le Bourgeois gentilhomme - Molière

[edit] 1660s

1669 in literature - Jean Racine's Britannicus
1668 in literature - Birth of Alain-René Lesage
1667 in literature - John Milton's Paradise Lost
1666 in literature - Gottfried Leibniz's De Arte Combinatoria ('On the Art of Combination')
1665 in literature - Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society begins publication
1664 in literature - Molière's Tartuffe
1663 in literature
1662 in literature - Molière's L'école des femmes
1661 in literature
1660 in literature - Samuel Pepys opens his diary

[edit] 1650s

1659 in literature
1658 in literature
1657 in literature
1656 in literature
1655 in literature
1654 in literature
1653 in literature
1652 in literature
1651 in literature
1650 in literature Death of René Descartes, philosopher (born 1596)

[edit] 1640s

1649 in literature
1648 in literature
1647 in literature
1646 in literature
1645 in literature
1644 in literature
1643 in literature
1642 in literature
1641 in literature
1640 in literature - René Descartes completes Meditations on First Philosophy: "I think therefore I am"

[edit] 1630s

1639 in literature - Birth of Jean Racine
1638 in literature
1637 in literature
1636 in literature - the Annals of the Four Masters are completed
1635 in literature
1634 in literature
1633 in literature
1632 in literature
1631 in literature
1630 in literature

[edit] 1620s

1629 in literature
1628 in literature
1627 in literature
1626 in literature
1625 in literature
1624 in literature
1623 in literature
1622 in literature - Birth of Molière (d. 1673)
1621 in literature
1620 in literature - Novum Organum – Francis Bacon

[edit] 1610s

1619 in literature
1618 in literature
1617 in literature
1616 in literature - Death of William Shakespeare, genius, dramatist and poet (b. 1564), Miguel de Cervantes, Spanish writer (b.1547)
1615 in literature - Don Quixote de la Mancha (Part 2) - Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
1614 in literature
1613 in literature - Henry VIII - William Shakespeare
1612 in literature
1611 in literature - The Tempest - William Shakespeare
1610 in literature

[edit] 1600s

1609 in literature
1608 in literature
1607 in literature
1606 in literature
1605 in literature - King Lear - William Shakespeare; Don Quixote de la Mancha (Part 1) Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
1604 in literature - William Shakespeare - Hamlet
1603 in literature - Measure for Measure - William Shakespeare
1602 in literature
1601 in literature - William Shakespeare - Twelfth Night
1600 in literature - William Shakespeare - Henry IV, Part 2, The Merchant of Venice, Henry V, A Midsummer Night's Dream, and Much Ado About Nothing published

[edit] 16th century

Main article: 16th century in literature

[edit] 1590s

1599 in literature - William Shakespeare - Henry V,

Julius Caesar

1598 in literature - William Shakespeare - Henry IV, Part 1 and Love's Labor's Lost published
1597 in literature - Francis Bacon Essays
1596 in literature - Edmund Spenser - The Faerie Queene, Books 4-6

1595 in literature - William Shakespeare - Richard II, Romeo and Juliet
1594 in literature - The Unfortunate Traveller, Thomas Nashe
1593 in literature - Death of Christopher Marlowe, dramatist and poet (born 1564)
1592 in literature
1591 in literature
1590 in literature - Christopher Marlowe - Tamburlaine (both parts published); Edmund Spenser - The Faerie Queene, Books 1-3; Sir Philip Sidney - Arcadia
unknown year in 1590s - Journey to the West, Wu Cheng'en

[edit] 1580s

1589 in literature - The Passionate Shepherd to His Love - Christopher Marlowe
1588 in literature - The Battle of Alcazar (date first performed) - George Peele
1587 in literature - A discourse of the subtill practises of deuilles by witches and sorcerers - George Gifford
1586 in literature - Historie of the Reformatioun of Religioun within the Realms of Scotland - John Knox
1585 in literature - La Galatea - Miguel de Cervantes
1584 in literature - Campaspe, Sapho and Phao - John Lyly
1583 in literature - The Anatomy of Abuses - Philip Stubbes
1582 in literature - Divers Voyages - Richard Hakluyt
1581 in literature - Second Book of Discipline
1580 in literature - Os Lusíadas - Luís Vaz de Camões

[edit] 1570s

1579 in literature
1578 in literature
1577 in literature
1576 in literature
1575 in literature
1574 in literature
1573 in literature
1572 in literature
1571 in literature
1570 in literature Abraham Ortelius - Theatrum Orbis Terrarum (the first modern atlas)

[edit] 1560s

1569 in literature – La Araucana, part 1 - Joan Perez de Lazarraga
1568 in literature - Giorgio Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects; Wawrzyniec Grzymała Goślicki - De optimo senatore
1567 in literature - William Salesbury - New Testament (first Welsh language version); Magdeburg Centuries
1566 in literature - William Painter - The Palace of Pleasure
1565 in literature - Bernardino Telesio - De natura juxta propria principia
1564 in literature – Birth of William Shakespeare dramatist and poet (d.1616); Christopher Marlowe, dramatist and poet (d. 1593)
1563 in literature – Foxe's Book of Martyrs - John Foxe
1562 in literature – Arthur Brooke - The Tragical History of Romeus and Juliet

1561 in literature - John Calvin - Institutes of the Christian Religion
1560 in literature – Geneva Bible (first full edition)

1550s in literature – The Elizabethan version of the Book of Common Prayer of the Church of England, which remained in use until the mid-17th century and was the first English Prayer Book in America.

1547 in literature – Birth of Miguel de Cervantes (d.1616)

1540s in literature – Nicolaus Copernicus - De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (On the Revolution of the Heavenly Spheres)
1530s in literature – Niccolò Machiavelli - The Prince; François Rabelais - Pantagruel; Luther Bible translation by Martin Luther
1520s in literature – Baltissare Castiglione - The Book of the Courtier
1510s in literature – Thomas More - Utopia
1500s in literature – Marko Marulić - Judita; Erasmus - In Praise of Folly

[edit] Middle Ages

Further information: Medieval literature

15th century in literature – Johann Gutenberg prints the Vulgate Bible; – Sir Thomas Malory – Le Morte d'Arthur;
14th century in literature – The Divine Comedy – Dante Alighieri; The Decameron – Giovanni Boccaccio; Canterbury Tales – Geoffrey Chaucer
13th century in literature – Theologus Autodidactus, Gesta Romanorum – Ibn al-Nafis; The Travels of Marco Polo – Marco Polo
12th century in literature – Hayy ibn Yaqdhan – Ibn Tufail
11th century in literature – The Tale of Genji – Murasaki Shikibu
10th century in literature – One Thousand and One Nights
6th to 9th centuries in literature – Book of Kells; The Pillow Book – Sei Shōnagon

[edit] Ancient times

Ancient literature